Sorrento, great place for a holiday. Or a much longer stay

The holiday town has always been a meeting place. Here's how it looks now. By John Button.

My memory of Sorrento in Italy is of gift shops selling wood-inlay music boxes that played metallic versions of O Sole Mio, Funiculi Funicula and Come back to Sorrento. Why would one? Except that a music box makes a great present for a close enemy.

Australia's Sorrento, which once produced famous limestone, now produces famous vanilla slices, said to be the best in Victoria. One for a close friend. Half a dozen would mollify the most dangerous enemy.

The two Sorrentos have things in common: both service towns, retirement spots, a history as prestigious holiday resorts. Sorrento in Italy has been in this line of business since Roman times; our Sorrento since the late 1870s.

My grandchildren think Sorrento is great for holidays, the fourth generation of my family to do so. This is not a big deal. But there is something appealing about continuity, now locked in with a holiday house to go to.

Nature has been kind to Sorrento. At the thin end of the Mornington Peninsula, it has two coastlines less than a few kilometres apart. One is rugged and spectacular, with a rock pool and a narrow surf beach for the dangerously committed. The other is spacious and gentle, suitable for learning to swim, sandcastles and mucking about in boats. The third kindness is the humble tea-tree that dominates the landscape, concealing a multitude of architectural sins and what might otherwise look like an ugly urban sprawl.

From Coppin's Lookout high above the back beach, one can look down on all of this and understand the place's charm. "Every prospect pleases," the hymnist said, "and only man is vile."

In the holiday season the population of Sorrento doubles. The Nepean Highway clogs up and the ferry from Queenscliff discharges cars and passengers on an hourly schedule. The main street, with its food shops, clothing boutiques, restaurants and coffee bars, buzzes with activity and loses some of its charm.

People queue for fish and chips, wait anxiously for a kerbside table and squabble over parking spaces. Shoppers contest for the firmest lettuces or the last family-size quiche Lorraine. Jostling up and down the footpath young men and young women studiously appraise each other. Older men study young women, puppies yap, faces are fed with popcorn and ice-cream and children cry. Most holiday resorts suffer from some of this, from the twin pressures of population and affluence. It's in other ways that Sorrento is different.

The Sorrento holiday population seems more Anglo-Saxon and looks richer, with all those Benzes and Beamers in the main street, expensive jewellery on display, fashionable casual clothing, well-groomed women and well-groomed poodles. In the coffee shops the chitchat is about schools rather than education and the township is referred to as "the village" - not so much a retreat as another meeting place, just a bit different from those other villages in Toorak and South Yarra.

Over a cappuccino a smart middle-aged woman explains to a friend that she and her husband had moved from Blairgowrie to Sorrento (a distance of about eight kilometres) "to be closer to the action". "The action", she suggests, is at Portsea. Action means social action, but not of the kind envisaged, for example, by the Salvation Army, the Communist Party or the Catholic Church.

There's a lingering aroma of this desperate upward mobility, which discerning visitors seem quick to detect. Perhaps it's invigorating to inhale the perfumed air of affluence at Portsea, but, apart from the pub, which seems to specialise in rites of passage for school-leavers, Portsea has no real commercial hub. It is more a retreat from another tiresome year of accumulating. The "village" is the market place and the meeting place.

Portsea is "connected" to Sorrento by a line of expensive holiday mansions along the cliff tops overlooking Port Phillip Bay. Here old money rubs shoulders with new. Patricians, a status established over time, live side by side with a bunch of Great Gatsbys, adding a touch of the conspicuous high life.

Beyond Portsea is Point Nepean, rich in history and dramatic seascapes and saved last year from commercial development. There, the challenge, if you want one, is to keep up with the bushwalkers and cyclists. There's no real estate envy, no hassle. It's a place where every prospect pleases and people share a common enjoyment.

George Coppin, the "father of Sorrento", was an entrepreneur with a public vision and a love of the site's natural attractions. Once it was a meeting place and probably a burial place for the Boon Wurrung people.

Today it's still a meeting place, accommodating with some success the pressures of change. Even the peaceful little cemetery is under pressure.

Forward-looking people book themselves grave sites. There are some new and monumental Chinese and Vietnamese tombstones. The feng shui is said to be excellent.

John Button is a Melbourne writer and was a minister in the Hawke government.